Science Trumps religion!

Monday 10^th November.

Our faster swimming regime seems to be kicking in quite well. I feel much trimmer around the midriff and my legs have extra bounce. Laura says if I continue to imitate Tigger she will hit me with a honey pot (empty, of course.) We have taken 10 minutes off our usual time and I think (in all seriousness now) that we have toned our muscles more than they were before. Sarah has found some information about how to calculate whether the exercise is adding muscle mass or removing excess body fat. It seemed a bit Double Dutch to me but Loll has been examining our bodies (any excuse, I keep telling her) with these plastic calliper type things and entering the results on a spread sheet. Apparently we are losing body fat at the moment but if we pressed on with increasing the speed we’d start to build muscle mass which can turn to fat (?). See what I mean about Double Dutch.

Trevor has asked to change his night from Wednesday to Monday permanently, so Laura agreed. I checked our old year planner from the last academic year and we only had one event on a Monday night all year. Wednesday and Thursday seem to be our most popular mid-week choices for our ‘culture vulturing’. He brought his Mum’s car again tonight and was disappointed that we didn’t fall down and offer supplication to the great god motor. I played up to the stereotype and told him yes, it was a nice car. It was red. I like red cars. I am not sure if he understands irony. Laura does and giggled at my bimbo impression.

Dad called and asked if they could come down next Monday instead of Tuesday for the Bryan Adams concert. It will mean less rush on Tuesday and they can they potter back up to Lancaster on Wednesday. I wonder how much actual teaching my Dad gets done at Uni at all, sometimes! I asked him if it was still OK for Loll and me to come up this weekend, as we’d arranged, and he had to admit he’d forgotten we’d scheduled a visit. I blame Louisa’s impending confinement, it has addled his brains!

I am standing in front of the great unwashed and dishevelled (undergrads) again on Thursday for the next in my series of lectures/tutorials. This week I have got some photographs from the Royal Archives and several Cathedral Accounts, as well, to give them 2^nd hand access to genuine resource material. (I took the photo’s during my Masters’ work.) These are copies of the ones I took, which I have annotated, to make the points about the see-saw effect of the revenues switching locations from Ecclesiastical sources to State ones. The actual research took me about a month to find what I was looking for and these ‘u.n.d.’s will get a digest of it in about an hour! We touched upon this last time, so they are ‘genned up’ and ready – hopefully.

I may pad it out with some background about how tricky it was just so they don’t get too blasé about how much effort is required at times to produce / discover the sources for a Masters’. Dad keeps telling me that when I use my own research I must not make light of the time and effort expended in getting the information. Don’t overdo it and become a braggart; but don’t make light of it either. It might be his old cynicism kicking in but he is convinced that professional plagiarism can be rife if you allow the thieves the opportunity to steal your work. Maybe I am still wearing the rosy glasses at the moment. He has been doing this for almost forty years!

I have mid semester meetings this week and next with my tutees. I really enjoy that. It is so pleasing to see how much they are getting out of their time with us. Even my little limpet has blossomed and is no longer at my office (Broom Cupboard) every verse end any more. Mandy has dumped last year’s boyfriend but is a much more confident and outspoken person compared to a year ago. She has volunteered to help out at the group session with each set so I have agreed and she can be my “secretary” for the two hours! It will be mainly dealing with dishing out things and sorting the tea/coffee but should give me more time for the real purpose of the meetings – the Pastoral care.

Laura thinks I am going a bit over the top about this as her Tutor is a much more laid-back, hands-off sort of Tutor but that makes me wonder if she isn’t being a bit short changed. His idea of checking up on how she is doing is a few minutes chat if they meet around the campus. That can’t be right can it?

Trevor spent the full two hours and left to drive himself, proudly, back home in his nice red car.

Tuesday Nov 11^th.

I was sorely tempted to wear a white poppy alongside my red one today, but luckily common sense (and Laura) prevailed. Why stir up enmity unnecessarily? I do think we are in danger of losing the plot completely though. We have this nice, middle-class sanitised version of events when in reality all war is brutal, nasty and appalling. That is what we should be remembering too. Putting this superficial, anaesthetised gloss on past wars just makes it easier for those [MEN] in power to persuade the masses that any war is justified.

Today being our full uni day, we all trooped off to the Indian restaurant for our lunch, Felice included. She is growing to appreciate the delights of Indian food after being apprehensive and scathing at first. I had the lunchtime special Thali as usual but Felice tried the Jalfrezi. I don’t think she is quite ready for the hotter versions of the menu yet! She drank a whole jug of water!

We had the double pupils tonight, Laura with Bobbi and me with Olivia. Olivia seems to be just as worried about her English as she was before. Either I am not getting through or there is a block somehow. We are going to work on planning essays which seems to be her big bugbear. I know we have done this already but it obviously needs revisiting time and again.

One worrying thing I did discover was that she doesn’t read for pleasure at all! How sad is that? She is glued to her computer / tablet / smart phone for most of the time at home when she isn’t doing her homework, according to her Mum. That can’t be helping can it? I have tried to get her to think about reading some things to help her English, maybe if she looks on it as though it is a help to her exam success it may end up being something she does for pleasure too. I obviously steered clear of my all-time favourite book, Jane Eyre, as that may have the opposite effect from the one I am hoping to achieve. [That too is a sad indictment of modern society too, if you think about it.] She has been tasked with having found something she wants to read by next week, I will then get a copy (if I haven’t got one already) and on the following week we’ll discuss what we’ve read. A bit like a University Tutorial (I told her, which sort of piqued her interest).

Apparently Bobbi wanted to know more about lesbianism tonight but Laura, quite sensibly, refused to be drawn. I hope there isn’t going to be a problem down the line with this.

I told the Lollster I wanted to know more about lesbianism, too, when the pupils had left and she told me she’d arrange a practical lesson when I got back from walking the dog. She did. I have to say I can’t fault her teaching methods at all.

Wednesday 12^th November.

I can’t believe that the morons who hadn’t got their bloody arses into gear to go and see the poppies at the Tower of London are now bleating because they are being taken down. Serves you right, you dozy buggers! If you had your fingers on the pulse of current events you’d have known about it weeks ago and even been able to have bought a poppy too. No doubt these stupid cretins will start bleating about how there should be more poppies made too, so they can buy one! Why do the great unwashed never know what’s going on? (We bought our poppies, one each for me and Laura) way back when they first went on sale! Then we do read newspapers which contain ‘real’ news not crap about celebrities and TV ‘stars’!

The stupid idiots won’t even realise that the installations which are being left would have been left anyway, so the sop to the ignorant will have worked without anything needing to be done.

We had our usual half and half day today and I actually got to speak to the barrister whose handwriting looked like the trail left behind after a drunken spider had fallen into an inkwell! He was quite amused by my description of his scrawl but in mitigation held up a hand with three fingers taped together after breaking one playing squash! I felt a bit embarrassed. But only a bit. He could have typed a bloody note or sent an e-mail! I didn’t complain as Mrs B had done a translation for me last week.

He was pleased with what I had found so far and suggested some areas to explore. He also said he would swing it for me to come and watch one of the days in court after all my work, if Mr Carr / Mrs Briggs agreed. They will, I have done this before with one of the female barristers. I go in with them to their offices but when the proceedings start I have to go to the public gallery (I was saved a seat behind out team last time) so I could have sneaky whispered chats as and when. It wasn’t as exciting as I had hoped last time (the only time, in fact) as the defendant suddenly, out of the blue, changed his plea to guilty! The court date isn’t until mid-December so I have a good three weeks to go.

We had a night free of pupils tonight as Trevor had moved his day to Monday so I suggested we visit the cinema, we booked ourselves in for the 8pm showing of Interstellar. We used our S.U. cards and got £1.40 off our tickets and whist watching the trailers we discovered a mass of things we ought to get ready to see; the final part of The Hobbit, the first part of Mockingjay, to name but two. I hate the way film companies have started to do this, splitting the last part of a film into two so they can fleece the fans!

I was pleased by the range of live streaming available from theatres that was coming up, so we may go to some of those as well. It works out far cheaper than actually going to see the shows in the theatre itself.

Interstellar. Well, what can I say? Great premise. Wonderful special effects. Clunky dialogue and what happened to the last reel? Excellent for most of the time and then blew it at the end. Laura’s words, not mine but echoing my sentiments exactly. Still for the price we paid, who’s to grumble. It was a bit busier than I had expected for a Wednesday night, well after the film’s release date, but hey ho, that’s the chance you take with Low Art! LOL

Thursday 13^th Nov

I am stunned and amazed by the news from Darmstadt. Imagine the idea of one of those stupid stone age, iron age or dark age religion dominated countries having the vision to launch satellites into the heavens; instead of arguing about whether the prophet’s followers or his family are best trusted to lead their faith; or whether priests should marry and women be allowed to restrict their fertility through the use of chemicals or if the Palestinians should actually be given their own land back. If those three and the other faiths around the globe had sway we would be no better off at all. It is at times like these that the absolute certainty of no god, no heaven or hell are brought home.

How can people be so blinkered and narrow-minded in the face of the evidence that is all around them? I am pleased I renounced my specious faith when I did. I am proud that I am a rational, open and inquisitive creature who can see through the flim flam and the self-interest of these moronic world views and their utter and complete worthlessness compared with the truth and beauty of a life scientific.

The only hope for our world is more people like me. Truth over ignorance.

In striving to instil truth over ignorance in my students I have found that well prepared and planned in advance is always best. What I hadn’t counted on was being asked what the Royal Archive was like! I must have lost 10 minutes in describing the shelving systems and the rolls of documents and the keepers of the place. The custodians didn’t try to be unhelpful but you just knew they could be if they wanted! The u.n.d’s loved the extra details, how silly. How silly of me not to anticipate they would. I was really pleased with the way everything went and my heart rate returned to a normal level pretty soon after it was all over.

I didn’t have long to dwell on the matter, though; a swift meeting with Feli discussing our progress this week and then me and the Lollster were off and away to XXX & Y for our afternoon of research and reprographics. It keeps the wolf from the door.

Jenny-Leigh and Sally provided even more stimulus for the little grey cells this evening as I taught J-L about metaphysical poetry and Laura taught Sal something mathematical and equally as beautiful in its own way. They present a refreshing view of the future which isn’t tainted and corrupted by the past and traditions although I sort of suspect they will follow the paths of their peers eventually in their life choices. All we can hope is that they don’t allow themselves to become closed and blinkered to new possibilities and things which alter their paradigm of reality.

Just imagine, as I have written this, these sentient apes, who infest the surface of this insignificant blue and white planet, have been able to land a machine on a comet millions and millions of miles from Earth, whilst a second machine is in orbit round it. The orbiter is going to track the comet to its perihelion and back, sending us unique data which will alter our perception of the world again unless you are a Christian, Muslim, Jew, Hindu, Sikh or any other member of a crackpot idea about divinity controlling the universe.